The Nature tab — whales, sightings, birds, turtles and the map
The Nature tab is what has actually been recorded near Sunset Beach lately, then what the season says to expect, then two screens worth opening deliberately. It opens with Times & seasons (the almanac’s next window and the doors to When to go, This week and The year), then three groups: Happening now — Right whales, Seen near here lately, Migration radar; This season — Sea turtles, Birds, What you might see; and Go deeper — the Nature map and Fishing. Every data section has a ⓘ button that explains the limits of the data beside it (the Nature map row is the one door without one). Nothing on this tab is a live animal position; the closest it comes is a NOAA slow zone that exists because a right whale was recently detected inside it.
The almanac half — Times & seasons, When to go, This week and The year — is covered on its own page, When to go, and the Fishing screen on Fishing. This page covers the rest.
Right whales
Section titled “Right whales”Shown only in season (November to April) or whenever a detection-triggered slow zone is active nearby; out of season with nothing detected the section is left off the screen. It shows a headline, a season note, one row per active Dynamic Management Area (name, distance and compass direction from the beach, what triggered it, and the date it is in force to), and always the approach rule:
Federal law requires staying 500 yards from a North Atlantic right whale — that applies to boats, paddleboards, drones and swimmers alike.
The headline is one of four sentences depending on the state:
| State | Headline |
|---|---|
| A slow zone is active within 200 miles | ”NOAA has an active right whale slow zone N miles DIR of the beach — a whale was sighted / heard on a hydrophone / detected inside it within about the last two weeks.” |
| December–March, nothing detected | ”Peak right whale season. No detection-triggered slow zone is active nearby right now, but this is the calving ground and mothers with calves pass close inshore.” |
| November or April, nothing detected | ”Right whale season is open (Nov–Apr) but this is outside the December–March peak. No slow zone is active nearby.” |
| May–October | ”Out of season. Right whales are on the feeding grounds off New England and Canada; they return to this coast to calve from about November.” |
The zones are NOAA’s own regulatory response to whales, published as ArcGIS feature services. A Dynamic Management Area is a voluntary vessel slow zone created because a right whale was seen or heard inside it within about the last two weeks — so a zone appearing offshore means a whale was recently there, not that one is there now. Seasonal Management Areas are the mandatory speed zones that run 1 November to 30 April. The season note tells you that the water off this beach is inside the federally designated calving-ground critical habitat — the boundary starts at the surf line, not miles out.
Seen near here lately
Section titled “Seen near here lately”Community sightings from iNaturalist: photographs uploaded by whoever happened to be out with a phone, identified by other users. The section lists the six most recent records within about 25 miles (40 km) over the last 30 days, each with the date and its distance and direction from the beach — or “location blurred” for protected species — and a link “All N recent sightings” to the full list. If the source is down you see “No sightings available.” or the upstream error.
Unlike the OBIS records under What you might see, these are live, often the same afternoon. The bias is the thing to hold on to: a cluster of pins marks where people walked, not where animals are, and an empty stretch usually means nobody went there. It is thin on exactly the animals people ask about — within 25 miles there have been a handful of whale and dolphin records in eight years, because almost nobody photographs a dorsal fin from the strand.
The Sightings screen
Section titled “The Sightings screen”Two sections:
- Whales, turtles and sharks — three rows (Whales & dolphins, Sea turtles, Sharks & rays) with the total number of records in the last eight years and a one-line verdict such as “Only 5 records in 8 years. Most recent: August 27, 2025. Too few to read anything into — casual observers rarely photograph these from shore.” The counts run over eight years rather than the recent window because a month would show nothing and imply an empty ocean.
- Last 30 days — every recent record, colour-dotted by group. Tap one for the sighting sheet: when it was seen, distance and direction, place, whether it is Research grade (identification confirmed by other users), and Open on iNaturalist.
Some pins are missing on purpose: iNaturalist blurs the location of species at conservation risk, which on this beach means every sea turtle, so those records are counted but never mapped.
Migration radar
Section titled “Migration radar”What the weather radar saw moving over Brunswick County after dark, from BirdCast (Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Colorado State University and UMass Amherst). The section shows a headline sentence and, when there was a measured night with anything moving, three figures for the night’s peak: Peak rate in birds/km/hr, Over the county (birds aloft at once) and Heading with speed in m/s. After dark, an Aloft right now row shows the live rate. A link “Last night, hour by hour” (or “Tonight, hour by hour” while the night is still running) opens the Migration radar screen, and “Tonight’s forecast map” opens BirdCast’s forecast page in your browser — the forecast half is not published in any feed, so it is a link rather than a panel.
Almost all songbird migration happens at night, so the numbers describe the last night rather than this moment; by day the radar is seeing insects and weather, BirdCast marks those readings invalid, and the panel does not show them — by day it is still describing the last night. Radar cannot tell one species from another — for names, use the Birds section. The panel is absent entirely on a Worker that does not send migration data, and shows “No migration radar available.” when the feed is down.
The Migration radar screen
Section titled “The Migration radar screen”| Section | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Header (Brunswick County, NC) | The headline and, after dark, Aloft right now. |
| Through the night / Tonight so far | One row per two-hour sample from 7 PM to 8 AM: the local time, a bar scaled to the night’s peak, the rate, and the direction and mean height in metres. The busiest hour is highlighted. |
| What this is | Night readings — how many samples were usable out of how many radar files — and the caveat that this is county-wide radar, not a count over this beach. |
| Links | Tonight’s forecast map, Brunswick County dashboard, How to cite BirdCast. |
The intensity words in the headline (light, moderate, heavy, intense) are the app’s own banding of the peak rate, not a Cornell scale: under 25 birds/km/hr is light, under 100 moderate, under 400 heavy, and 400 and above intense.
Sea turtles
Section titled “Sea turtles”The season phase and the year’s totals. The headline is one of Off season, Nesting season, Nesting and hatching overlap, Hatching season or Late hatching, computed from the published nesting and incubation windows for North Carolina, with a detail line (in hatching phases it names roughly when the nests now due were laid). From 1 May to 31 October a Lights out warning is shown: hatchlings follow the brightest horizon, and light spilling onto the sand sends them inland instead of to sea.
| Dates | Phase |
|---|---|
| Before 1 May, after 15 November | Off season — “No nesting or hatching activity. Patrols resume on 1 May.” |
| 1 May – 30 June | Nesting season |
| 1 July – 31 August | Nesting and hatching overlap |
| 1 September – 15 October | Hatching season |
| 16 October – 15 November | Late hatching |
Below that, three counts — Nests, Boils (mass hatchling emergences) and False crawls — scraped from the Sunset Beach Turtle Watch Program’s own page, with the program’s “as of” date in the section header. When the page can’t be read you see the reason instead (for example “Season totals weren’t found on the page — the layout may have changed.”). “What to do on the beach” opens the guidance list (fill in holes, take gear off overnight, shield lights, red flashlight only, no flash photography, keep dogs leashed, don’t disturb marked nests).
Individual nest hatch dates aren’t published anywhere — the program posts season totals, not per-nest due dates — so the app can tell you that hatching is underway but not which night to stand on which dune.
Records from eBird (Cornell Lab of Ornithology): checklists submitted within about 19 miles (30 km) in the last 7 days, plus notable records — species eBird’s own regional filters flag as unusual for this place and date — over the last 14 days. The section shows up to four notable birds (name, date, place, distance) and a link “N species this week” to the Birds screen, which lists Notable and Reported nearby with counts.
Like the community sightings, this measures effort as much as presence — a quiet week usually means nobody went birding. If the Worker has no eBird API key the section reads “Not configured” rather than pretending the upstream is broken; if the feed is down, “No bird data available.”
What you might see
Section titled “What you might see”Six curated species — North Atlantic right whale, humpback whale, bottlenose dolphin, loggerhead sea turtle, green sea turtle and white shark — with the months each is expected off this beach. In season, only the species currently in season are listed, tagged in season; out of season for everything, all six are shown. Tap one for When, Where to look, the scientific name, group, and the number of OBIS records nearby (historical).
Seasons here are curated from published natural history, not derived from record counts. OBIS (the Ocean Biodiversity Information System) supplies only the corroborating record totals, and those lag by months to years — nothing here is a live sighting. Deriving seasons from OBIS record dates would report bottlenose dolphins as a February animal; they are year-round residents, and the records cluster in winter because that is when the right-whale aerial surveys fly.
Nature map
Section titled “Nature map”A map centred on the beach showing, when present, the right whale calving habitat outline, any Seasonal Management Areas, any active slow zone (“Active slow zone — a whale was detected here”), up to 90 recent community sightings as coloured dots (Birds, Mammals, Reptiles, Insects, Plants, Molluscs), up to 20 notable eBird records, and a pin for Sunset Beach. Tap a dot for the sighting sheet. The caption states how many sightings are drawn from the last 30 days and how many more are withheld because iNaturalist blurs protected-species locations — there is no honest point to draw for those.
The map deliberately draws no individual tracked animals. There is no public feed of live shark or whale positions near this beach: OCEARCH’s tracker has no open endpoint and Movebank gates every study behind licence acceptance. What is drawn instead is NOAA’s regulatory response to whales.
Fishing
Section titled “Fishing”A summary row under Go deeper: yesterday’s catch off the pier (or “Seasons, bait and limits” when there is no report) and a warning for any fish that is biting but closed to possession. Tap it for the Fishing screen — see Fishing.